PREAMBLE BY JON: When I was a child I lived in Hong Kong.I spent the latter part of August and early September 1970 in hospital undergoing a barbaric operation on my knees. I went in on the day after my eleventh birthday, and stayed in for the next four weeks.
However, I was allowed to come home for weekends, and every Friday afternoon an ambulance would drive from Queen Mary Hospital down in Pokfulam, up the Peak, until I was carried into our ground floor flat at Peak Mansions by two burly young ambulancemen. Somehow, I can surmise with the benefit of hindsight, that my father had pulled rank, because I had even been provided with a hospital bed on wheels, (something which I doubt was a service available to all and sundry) and on very sunny days Ah Tim and Ah Tam (the Chinese couple who looked after us) would wheel me out into the conservatory, and open the french windows so I could haul myself up in bed using the support bars, and look out onto the world outside.
Peak Mansions was (I use the past tense because it was apparently demolished in 1989) a six story squat building with an impressively mock Georgian façade, and two seemingly pointless green domes on the roof. It had originally been built, either late in the 19th or early in the 20th Century as accomodation for expat Civil Servants, but during WW2 it was the home of the Hong Kong Volunteer Force and was badly damaged by shelling. However it was seriously rebuilt after the war, and carried on with its original purpose. Running along the front of the building was Peak Road, and on the other side of the road was a heavily forested hillside which tumbled down for miles to the town (now city) of Pokfulam. This forest was the haunt of leopard cats, pangolins, civets, and porcupines, and within living history had been home to tigers and possibly even leopards. It was a magnificent place, and I spent much of my childhood exploring it, and much of my adulthood dreaming about it, and after a week of surgery (they botched the operation the first time and had to do it again) and physiotherapy, just to lie in my bed looking through the open french windows at the jungle below was bliss.
Outside the windows, a shallow sloping stretch of lawn led down to the road, and my mother was wont to recline on a sun lounger there and sunbathe. Occasionally she would be joined by her friends, and on this particular occasion a lady called Sheila Muirhead, with an irritating young son aged four had come to visit. I was annoyed. Now my mother would not be willing to tell me stories, or make too much of a fuss of me, and what was worse, her son was too young for me to be able to talk to on any meaningful level, and as both my legs were in plaster, and I was wracked with agony every time I moved, I couldn’t do anything more boisterous in terms of play.
Then I had an idea.
For my birthday, the day before I went into hospital I had received a copy of Hong Kong Butterflies by Major J.C.S Marsh, and I was desperate to put my newfound book to use. I was at the age when I had just begun to realise that some creatures were more closely related than others, and I wanted to identify the myriad animals that surrounded me. Fluttering along a few inches above the closely mown grass were dozens of small, blue butterflies. Major Marsh listed several dozen members of this family, quite a few of which looked very similar.
So I called to the toddler who was earnestly chuffing up and down the sloping lawn pretending to be a goods train.
“Hello” I said. “I’m Jonathan. What’s your name”.
“Richard”. He said. “What are you doing in bed?”
However, I was allowed to come home for weekends, and every Friday afternoon an ambulance would drive from Queen Mary Hospital down in Pokfulam, up the Peak, until I was carried into our ground floor flat at Peak Mansions by two burly young ambulancemen. Somehow, I can surmise with the benefit of hindsight, that my father had pulled rank, because I had even been provided with a hospital bed on wheels, (something which I doubt was a service available to all and sundry) and on very sunny days Ah Tim and Ah Tam (the Chinese couple who looked after us) would wheel me out into the conservatory, and open the french windows so I could haul myself up in bed using the support bars, and look out onto the world outside.
Peak Mansions was (I use the past tense because it was apparently demolished in 1989) a six story squat building with an impressively mock Georgian façade, and two seemingly pointless green domes on the roof. It had originally been built, either late in the 19th or early in the 20th Century as accomodation for expat Civil Servants, but during WW2 it was the home of the Hong Kong Volunteer Force and was badly damaged by shelling. However it was seriously rebuilt after the war, and carried on with its original purpose. Running along the front of the building was Peak Road, and on the other side of the road was a heavily forested hillside which tumbled down for miles to the town (now city) of Pokfulam. This forest was the haunt of leopard cats, pangolins, civets, and porcupines, and within living history had been home to tigers and possibly even leopards. It was a magnificent place, and I spent much of my childhood exploring it, and much of my adulthood dreaming about it, and after a week of surgery (they botched the operation the first time and had to do it again) and physiotherapy, just to lie in my bed looking through the open french windows at the jungle below was bliss.
Outside the windows, a shallow sloping stretch of lawn led down to the road, and my mother was wont to recline on a sun lounger there and sunbathe. Occasionally she would be joined by her friends, and on this particular occasion a lady called Sheila Muirhead, with an irritating young son aged four had come to visit. I was annoyed. Now my mother would not be willing to tell me stories, or make too much of a fuss of me, and what was worse, her son was too young for me to be able to talk to on any meaningful level, and as both my legs were in plaster, and I was wracked with agony every time I moved, I couldn’t do anything more boisterous in terms of play.
Then I had an idea.
For my birthday, the day before I went into hospital I had received a copy of Hong Kong Butterflies by Major J.C.S Marsh, and I was desperate to put my newfound book to use. I was at the age when I had just begun to realise that some creatures were more closely related than others, and I wanted to identify the myriad animals that surrounded me. Fluttering along a few inches above the closely mown grass were dozens of small, blue butterflies. Major Marsh listed several dozen members of this family, quite a few of which looked very similar.
So I called to the toddler who was earnestly chuffing up and down the sloping lawn pretending to be a goods train.
“Hello” I said. “I’m Jonathan. What’s your name”.
“Richard”. He said. “What are you doing in bed?”
So I told him, and despite the seven year gap in our ages, he not only seemed to sympathise with me, but – after I explained my predicament re. Major Marsh and the blue butterflies - he expressed - as well as a four-year-old can express anything – a willingness to help me in my investigations. So I told him where my bedroom was, and where I kept my butterfly net, and where my precious copy of Hong Kong Butterflies was, and he trotted off inside. About ten minutes later, after a few false starts, I was sitting up in bed with Major Marsh’s magnum opus on my knee, and a Robinson’s marmalade jar in one hand, as my young assistant – still making enthusiastic train noises – rushed up and down in search of butterflies.
We have been friends ever since. Richard has what Charlie Fort would have no doubt described as a "Wild Talent". He is the best researcher I have ever met, and invariably has something interesting on the go. I asked him if he wanted to write for Cryptozoology Online (I really must stop calling it the CFZ bloggothing) and he immediately asked me if I knew anything about mysterious freshwater seahorses in South America...
Seahorses are a genus(Hippocampus)of fish belonging to the family Synguathidae,which also include pipefish and leafy sea dragons.
There are over 32 species of seahorse, mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world. They prefer to live in sheltered areas such as sea grass beds,coral reefs,or mangroves….The male sea horse can give birth to as few as 1 and as many as 2000 “fry” at a time and pregnancies last anywhere from two to four weeks,depending on the species.” (1)
They must be amongst the most interesting of sea creatures. There are many different species all over the world. Whilst reading William Corliss`s seminal work Anomalies in Geology,on pages 53-54,in the chapter ESB6 `Living Organisms and Recent Fossils Found At High Altitudes` I was very surprised to discover reports of living seahorses in Lake Titicaca.
Lake Titicaca,which straddles the Bolivia-Peru border at a height of 12,530feet/3820m above sea level is an unusual place. Not only do the local inhabitants use reed boats to traverse the lake,similar to the ones used in ancient Egypt[“In fact,the type of reed plant is reportedly the same as the reed plant used in ancient Egypt…”(2) ] but up to at least the end of World War 2 and may be later, a species of sea horse,Hippocampus titicacensis was said to inhabit the Lake,proving to some that the Lake was once attached to the Pacific Ocean.Corliss refers to beliefs that the Andes may be very “young” geologically and that the putative Lake Titicaca seahorse,very high beaches with recent marine shells and recent plant fossils at very high altitudes are a sign of this.
There is a photo of a degenerate(because of in-breeding?) seahorse from the Lake on the website of Jim Forshey and Bruce Watts,two American experts on seahorses. This photo dates from about 1943 and is said to be a specimen at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin. (3) Arthur Posnansky,who mentions this seahorse in his volume one of “Tihuanacni: Cradle of American Man” stated: “The Indians believe that this animal is a sort of divinity,like everything that is strange and inexplicable to them.”(4). What is really inexplicable is,how did the seahorse get into the Lake and where are they now?
Even in the 1940s they were very rare and very recent web sites do not mention them at all,though trout,”suche” and “capache,” flamingos and duck are mentioned. If anyone can shed light on these enigmatic seahorses please can they contact the CFZ?
Thank you.
REFERENCES.
(1)Project Seahorse. The Biology of Seahorses. Reproduction. In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahorse
(2)Donald E.Chittick The Puzzle of Ancient Man (Newberg,Oregon), p193
(3) See: http://www.seahorses.com/AquariumAndFishItemsForSale/BibliographySeahorses2005Edition.pdf
(4) Ibid
REFERENCES.
(1)Project Seahorse. The Biology of Seahorses. Reproduction. In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahorse
(2)Donald E.Chittick The Puzzle of Ancient Man (Newberg,Oregon), p193
(3) See: http://www.seahorses.com/AquariumAndFishItemsForSale/BibliographySeahorses2005Edition.pdf
(4) Ibid
Richard Muirhead`s cryptozoological web site can be seen at:http://geocities.com/cryptozoology.muirhead
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